24 hours in the Middle East

I think it's fairly well known that I'd love to live in the Middle East for awhile... I came no where close to living in the Middle East, but I did get a little taste of it in October when we visited Abu Dhabi for the day. :) We arrived in the evening and our connecting flight didn't leave for 24 hours...so, we spent the night in the airport and then got a visa to visit town for the day!

One of these times when we sleep in an airport we really should get some pictures! This time we didn't have to sleep outside on hard plastic chairs (like we did in KL), but it was SO cold and SO loud that we really didn't get much sleep!

As with the last post, I'm going to let the pictures do the talking since I'm STILL behind on blog posts. So, without any further ado, here is 24 hours worth of Abu Dhabi:

This is the Grand Mosque..it is the largest (or possibly one of the largest) mosques in the country. We wanted to visit, but we couldn't because it was Friday. (Muslim Holy Day)

STOP! :)

Side note: we wanted to check our luggage at the airport but couldn't so we had to haul our guitar around with us everywhere.

The Emirates Palace...no, it's not a palace, it's a hotel--a really nice hotel and a landmark of the city!

The flagpole behind Amanda is one of the tallest free-standing flagpoles in the world (they were very proud of that...).

Inside on of the many, many malls. This mall was big enough to have both a skating rink and a ski hill!!

Our picnic lunch--a yogurt drink and some pastry things that tasted vaguely like samosas... they were great!

Well, after our picnic lunch it was about time to head to the airport for our flight to Cape Town. More on that later. Cheers!